British police are investigating the poisoning of a former Russian spy and outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin and have placed him under protective guard at a London hospital, Washington Post reported citing a Scotland Yard spokesman.
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November 20, 2006
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Russia, Vladimir Putin, Anna Politkovskaya, Federal Security Service (FSB), UK, London, Police, Books, Alexander Litvinenko, Scotland Yard, Alexander Goldfarb
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The Kremlin dismissed as “nonsense†on Monday suggestions that a dissident former Russian security agent living in Britain was poisoned in a Moscow-led plot, Reuters reports.
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Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy and fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin is fighting for his life in a London hospital after an apparent bid to kill him by poisoning, AFP news agency reports.
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A suspected Russian spy has been arrested in Montreal as he was about to board a plane to leave the country, the National Post has learned, capping a Canadian counter-intelligence operation that suggests espionage is alive and well long after the Cold War.
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November 16, 2006
The head of the Federal Security Service said Tuesday that his agency had information that terrorists were planning attacks against water plants in southern Russia.
“Such a threat is absolutely realistic,†Interfax quoted FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev as saying at a meeting of the country’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee.
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November 7, 2006
Russia’s FSB security service defended on Friday deporting an Uzbek man to his Central Asian homeland despite an order by the European Court of Human Rights to stop his deportation, Reuters reported.
Russia’s Federal Security Service, the main successor to the KGB, said Rustam Muminov was deported on Friday, Interfax news agency reported. His supporters have told Reuters Muminov was deported on Oct. 24.
The FSB said Muminov had moved to Russia in 2001 and started “preaching religious extremismâ€, Interfax reported. The FSB said it had worked with Uzbekistan’s National Security Service on the investigation of Muminov.
Rights groups have said Muminov could face life in jail, death or torture in Uzbekistan, accused by the West of jailing thousands of dissidents and using torture in prisons.
Officials in Uzbekistan, an authoritarian Central Asian state, deny those accusations.
While in Uzbekistan, Muminov “occupied himself with the propaganda of religious extremism and made calls for the armed takeover of powerâ€, Interfax quoted the FSB as saying in a statement.
A spokesman for the FSB said statements were only forwarded to those his superiors deem should receive them and declined to send Reuters a copy. He declined to comment further.
Rights groups such as Human Rights Watch have called on the European Union to demand Russia cease sending refugees or asylum seekers back to countries where they face harm.
The FSB said that Muminov was “an active member of the international terrorist organization Hizb-ut-Tahrirâ€. Hizb-ut-Tahrir is an Islamic group banned in Russia and Central Asia.
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October 27, 2006
Russia’s Federal Security Service has detained a high-ranking official of the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) who had been cooperating with Lithuanian secret services for a long time, Itar-Tass reported on Tuesday.
The FSB’s public relations center identified the detainee as Lt-Col Vasily Khitryuk of the FSIN’s internal service office in Kaliningrad, Russia’s Baltic exclave.
The officer allegedly passed state military secrets to the Baltic country’s security services, RIA Novosti adds.
“The suspect used his former colleagues and friends who serve in the Russian army and security-related agencies to obtain confidential informationâ€, the service said in a statement.
“Following orders from a Lithuanian intelligence officer, he [Khitryuk] offered them monetary rewards for supplying him with copies of secret documents,†the statement said.
The FSB said that during Khitryuk’s arrest, officers seized computer storage devices with files containing top-secret information on the combat readiness of the Baltic Fleet and Russia’s military contingent in Kaliningrad.
The service said it had gathered enough evidence to launch a criminal investigation.
The Embassy of Lithuania in Moscow refused to comment on the arrest. “We do not comment on such information,†an embassy official quoted by RIA Novosti said.
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